Happiness is imperfect
A pond, a cygnet and a stranger. How navigating your worst emotions breeds happiness.
“Evenin’, you alright?”
“Yeah, thanks, how are you?”
He doesn’t reply. His boots crunching on the frosted gravel are the only answer.
I don’t know this man. I’m standing at the edge of a pond, my breath fogging the air before me. On the black water, a swan and her adolescent cygnet drift, the mother asleep, the cygnet chirping curiously. The moon is just past full and hangs silver in a frost-bright sky. It’s -2 degrees Celsius.
I’m trying to surrender to a lot of things these days. I’ve spoken about giving in to time, to the ceaseless passage of it, to my inability to control it. I’ve also mumbled about surrendering to the dark, to the ways in which it makes you feel, but there’s another surrender experiment I’ve been trying out.
It comes hand in hand with my surrender to the dark, at least on this occasion, when I found myself staring at a pond at 10pm on a Wednesday whilst a nearby stranger ground weed.
I had been feeling overwhelmed all week. I’m still not entirely sure why. I’ve taken to interrogating my feelings and thoughts, partly to do with my therapist training, but also another manifestation of perfectionism, a desire to have perfect control over my mood. That interrogation is an art in itself. Sometimes, it can be too much. I become frustrated if I can’t work out why I’m feeling what I’m feeling. I need to know, I need to understand, and I need to find a solution. The perfectionist in me thinks it’s clear cut, but emotions are messy, unpredictable, hard to contain. It can be all too tempting to simply try and turn them off.
As Dr Emma Hepburn, Clinical Psychologist (and author of one of my favourite actually helpful self-help books ‘A Toolkit for Happiness’), said in a recent Instagram post:
“Telling your brain it shouldn’t have emotions is like telling your heart not to beat or your lungs not to breathe, and it doesn’t make your brain very happy.”
Emotions are central to our life and wellbeing. Through emotions, our brain tries its best to speak to us, to inform or warn us, but often we respond with denial or anger. There can then come a point when our emotions get too much. No matter how we might try to respond to them or validate them, we simply can’t keep up.
Earlier this week, I was feeling both on edge and numb, jostled between a state of heightened feeling and a state of uncomfortable emptiness. I tried to focus on what would help, reaching for well-worn coping mechanisms - reading, writing, music - but I was struggling to be present anywhere other than in my own head, analysing every inch of my emotions. I would prod and poke them and they would skitter out of view like rats, but each time I turned they would scuttle closer.
I went to night school on Wednesday feeling sluggish and drained. We were learning about the psychoanalyst and Freud’s arch-nemesis Carl Jung, yet I just couldn’t encourage my brain to muster any excitement. My frustration grew.
On the way home, I asked my brain what it needed. “Release,” it said. “Explosion.” I sang along far louder than usual to Taylor Swift. There was a spark of feeling in response, an emotion other than agitation, yet it was quickly snuffed out once I was home.
Again, I asked my brain what it needed, and it came back once more to that feeling of release. “Throw up,” it suggested, “scream, feel pain.” I eyed my water bottle, picked it up and gingerly hit myself in the head. The cat came over looking concerned, but more likely morbidly curious. I put the water bottle down and asked my brain again, “What do we need right now to feel more like us?”
“Air, the night and to be alone.”
And that was how I found myself at the pond whilst a stranger smoked weed and I chatted earnestly to the cygnet. I would usually have been afraid. Afraid during the dark, icy walk to the pond, afraid of the silence once there, afraid of the arrival of a strange man. Once, I would have talked myself out of it. I was being silly. But I know what ignoring my emotions has done in the past - it’s bought me a one-way ticket to depression.
I still took a maglite, ready to beat any would-be serial killers senseless. I stayed aware of my surroundings. But as the numbness subsided, it was calm that replaced it. I had given my overwhelmed brain what it wanted. So I went home, showered, sang Disney songs to myself, read about the history of the silk roads then went to sleep. And when I woke up, I felt like me again.
Denying your emotions, what you’re feeling, does not work. Telling your brain you’re not sad will not suddenly make you happy. As Dr Hepburn continued in her post:
“Research shows suppressing, avoiding, berating and shaming emotions doesn’t help us deal with them at all and just creates more stress and makes emotions even more difficult.
“Naming, validating, expressing and recognising emotions seems to help us process them.”
We have a degree of choice when it comes to responding to our feelings. I say ‘a degree’, because many of these responses aren’t taught, and as a result we develop unhealthy coping mechanisms, like violence, drugs or self-harm - solely physical responses that only serve to mask our feelings, not process them. Even less destructive coping mechanisms, like splashing cold water on your face when you’re anxious, might be good in the moment, but the only real way to properly work through our emotions is by accepting them.
That’s what I tried to do beside the pond, channelling my inner swan-whisperer, listening to the aesthetic dripping of water and the rumble of distant trains. I was feeling overwhelmed, perhaps inexplicably, likely not - and that was fine. I didn’t need to figure it out that time. I didn’t need to worry about the why or the how. I just had to pause and say, “Okay.”
Some of the hardest parts about emotions are the ways in which they seem to control us and the ways in which they snowball. Anxiety only triggers more anxiety, and anger only leaves us feeling things like shame and hurt and weariness in the end. Each emotion leads to another, but sometimes they will lead us to one that feels a little better.
In ‘A Toolkit for Happiness’, Dr Hepburn’s process for navigating emotions boils down to these steps:
Awareness - notice, don’t suppress.
Categorisation - name it.
Express it - find a helpful coping mechanism.
In regards to expressing your emotions in a constructive way, however, Dr Hepburn notes that:
“I always think that it’s a brain design flaw that at times of poor mental health, stress or overload, the brain seems to do the opposite. Our negative ninja goes into hyperdrive mode, spotting every single negative, even when there is none. Our brain’s fairly sensible managers and executives get the sack and we find it difficult to untangle what’s going on, problem-solve ways out, manage our attention or even to stand back from our thoughts and see them with perspective… Knowing this doesn’t mean it won’t happen, because the design flaw is inherent to all our brains, but it does mean we can spot it. This gives you an advantage because you can work around it, instead of just going with it.”
My brain wanted to find release in an attempt to reach peace. It really helpfully suggested to me that vomiting (grim) or triggering pain would help (it wouldn’t), before finally conceding that a cold walk and a visit to the pond would do the trick.
One of Dr Hepburn’s suggestions for dealing with a depressed or distressed brain that has conjured a terrible coping mechanism is to ask yourself if your brain’s idea will “help or hinder” you. Abusing alcohol, for example, will likely only make you feel worse or cause further problems down the line. And whilst belting out some Taylor Swift or talking to an inquisitive cygnet might not make you, personally, feel better, both certainly won’t make you feel worse.
As Dr Hepburn’s book is all about, finding and cultivating happiness means accepting that you won’t feel happy all the time. You will have terrible days and shitty experiences. You will likely feel so much pain you would give anything for it to stop. But understanding that it will stop, that pain and sadness and fear are not forever and the moment will pass, is the thing that will consistently get you back to happiness.
Get a physical copy of ‘A Toolkit for Happiness’ here (trust me, you want a physical version so you can scribble on her helpful diagrams).
I haven’t forgot the challenge I set myself in the last newsletter, by the way! Currently brainstorming some personally terrifying things I can do imperfectly for your entertainment and my messy growth.